Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Wildlife Paparazzi

We have some amazing wildlife in our small garden. We enjoy regular visit from frogs, a Robin, and a Blackbird couple to name few. We also have lots of butterflies. I'm especially happy about the butterflies. The butterfly population is struggling partly because people have less flowers in their gardens. I happily make our garden butterfly-friendly by planting flowers, but we also have other treats available for hungry butterflies:
vlienders en vijg
I was not in time to harvest these too figs but after seeing at one point five Red Admirals enjoying the rotten fig I stopped worrying about it. Lazy gardening makes a wildlife friendly garden!

The sunflowers have also been a joy to watch. The bigger ones were popular amongst the green Rose-ringed Parakeets. I couldn't believe my eyes when I first time saw green parakeets flying around here in the Hague. Apparently once upon a time some of them escaped from their keepers, and really liked it here. Now there are thousands of them. 
green bird 2

green bird
We also had smaller sunflowers that were very popular among small birds like Great Tits and  House Sparrows. I didn't get even a blurry picture of them, they were just too quick to me. 


The only thing I have done intentionally to attract wildlife are some butterfly friendly flowers. The rest has come naturally by growing lot of eatable things and not having the time and energy to keep the place too tidy.